Building a genuinely equitable succession planning strategy is demanding, but the stakes are strategic. When an organisation writes equity into the heart of its talent management strategy, it reduces the risk of bias, favouritism and internal politics in succession decisions. It also gives itself a better chance of strengthening the diversity of its leadership team, employee engagement and the inclusiveness of its organisational culture.
In high-stakes talent management decisions, data from personality assessment puts merit, leadership potential and fit for the role back at the centre of the process. To explore the question further, Hogan Assessments gathered the views of four coaches from the Hogan Coaching Network (HCN):
This article explains why equity has become unavoidable in succession planning and sets out four essential characteristics of an effective approach: transparency, objectivity, comprehensiveness and foresight.
Every sector, every market and every profession is bound to change. The pace of technological transformation, not least with the rise of generative artificial intelligence, is leading many organisations to question how prepared they are and whether their leaders can face what lies ahead.
"Predicting success in a fast-moving world is becoming harder and harder," James Sila explains. On his view, heads of talent everywhere are now asking themselves the same question: "Do we have the talent we need to deliver our business strategy over the long term?"
Because no organisation can predict with certainty how it will have to adapt, an equitable succession strategy, built on a diverse talent pool, is one of the best ways to strengthen its readiness for the future.
The cost of deficient succession planning is considerable: it is put at around one trillion dollars a year.(1)
A VUCA context, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, can naturally complicate transitions at CEO and C-suite level. But organisations also have to contend with ever shorter executive tenures. In many cases, the median tenure of a CEO is now under five years.(2)
Put another way, almost as soon as an organisation appoints a CEO, it should already be preparing that person's succession. Other leadership roles can turn over faster still, which makes a continuous process of identifying and developing high potentials indispensable.
For Rebecca Feder, filling an executive role in under six months is simply recruitment, not a genuinely strategic exercise.
"When succession planning is done well, it forms part of the organisation's annual rhythm. Whatever shape it takes, it starts early," she points out.
Unlike a rushed or purely reactive approach, an equitable succession strategy contributes directly to job satisfaction, talent retention, engagement, performance, business effectiveness and culture.
On the economic value of equity, Nattavut Kulnides explains: "Over time, organisations underperform their peers when they fail to build sufficient diversity of nationality, geography, gender and belief, among other dimensions."
James Sila also points out that making equity a systemic practice strengthens the employer brand while making real commercial sense. People look for workplaces where equity counts, where judgement of their performance will be fair and opportunity reaches everyone alike.
In short, best practice in succession planning demands genuine equity.
An equitable succession planning strategy has to be:
Here is what the coaches Hogan interviewed had to say about each of these dimensions.
Transparent succession planning starts by defining the role, not by identifying people.
Setting out precisely what a role demands creates a fairer selection process.
"Far too often, companies begin by asking themselves: 'Who are the people we like best that we could put into this role?'," Rebecca Feder observes.
Clarifying the role, by contrast, helps reduce bias.
Nattavut Kulnides explains that the unconscious biases present in hiring and selection processes can lead to less diversity of personality and, in time, limit organisational agility.
Rather than trying to fit an already favoured person into a role, someone whose profile or way of thinking closely resembles that of the leaders already in place, an organisation does well to start by defining and ranking the competencies the job requires.
This is the foundation of a transparent succession strategy and of assessment and development genuinely grounded in what the organisation needs.
Objective succession planning rests on systemic equity in selection, development and the identification of high potentials.
"Leaders have to make equity in talent management a systemic practice. Otherwise they risk introducing systemic bias themselves," James Sila explains. "You have to build the infrastructure that ensures that, from planning through identification to development, the whole system has the right checks and measures."
Systematising candidate selection reduces bias and improves the organisation's chances of identifying the best possible talent for a given role.
More precisely, every candidate should be assessed through the same objective steps.
"Organisations should have a standardised set of criteria to make the process as fair and objective as possible. They also have to ensure that everyone gets comparable conditions in the experiences offered to them," Ben Dattner says.
Treating candidates differently can lead to discrimination, intended or otherwise. Standardised practices, conversely, reduce the risk of inequity and strengthen the credibility of talent management decisions.
In a genuinely comprehensive succession strategy, planning starts early and comes back regularly among the organisation's priorities.
The four coaches interviewed agree on this point: anticipating matters.
Depending on the context, 18 to 24 months is a minimum for implementing a succession plan. In some situations, a horizon of three to five years will be more appropriate still.
Because roles and business needs change frequently, succession planning should form part of the organisation's annual, or even quarterly, strategic agenda.
Comprehensiveness also means tackling talent development well before a leadership role falls vacant.
"The earlier you can introduce the idea of development, the better. But it should not be left to chance," Nattavut Kulnides explains.
He recommends thinking about development from the hiring stage onwards: "For every person joining your organisation, you should know whether you have hired the right person or not."
To take a sufficiently broad view, Kulnides also recommends developing talent at every tier of the organisation.
First-line managers, middle managers, senior executives and board members can all benefit from leadership development programmes, high-potential schemes and coaching.
This approach lets organisations build the strongest possible talent pool. It avoids, in particular, ending up with potential successors who are too similar to one another, at precisely the moment the company would need diversity in order to adapt.
"When we assess the depth of the leadership pool, we often find we end up with people whose profiles or convictions are very much alike," he explains.
Too much similarity can hold back innovation and reduce diversity of thought.
A forward-looking succession strategy calls for anticipating, as far as possible, what will best serve the organisation in the years ahead.
That can mean taking difficult decisions about people, sometimes against the grain of internal political expectations.
Rebecca Feder illustrates the point with a fictional example of an organisation having to replace its CEO.
The "obvious" successor to the outgoing CEO was the sitting COO. He knew the business exceptionally well and had a firm grip on the operational dimensions it needed to run smoothly.
But the organisation was about to enter a new phase of its development. What it needed now was a CEO thoroughly at ease in front of the press and an audience, and those were skills the COO neither had nor particularly wanted.
"You have to separate personal relationships from the objective criteria attached to the role. That is where Hogan can come in: to define what the job requires and assess candidates against those criteria," Rebecca Feder explains.
In this situation, the difficult but sound decision would be to look for a different CEO, with skills better aligned to what the organisation actually needs, rather than automatically promoting the COO.
Succession planning is not, however, solely a matter of taking a rational decision with the emotions set aside.
Change management and stakeholder buy-in are essential dimensions of a forward-looking succession strategy too.
"There is a real art to bringing stakeholders together, reaching consensus and balancing competing objectives and priorities. At bottom, it remains a deeply human process," Ben Dattner says.
Personality assessment is an essential tool for building equitable succession planning.
Personality assessment allows the organisation to rely on equitable criteria: the data used shows no significant differences between groups protected by law.
Personality also predicts performance.
It helps organisations gauge how likely a person is to show integrity, competence and judgement, to communicate a vision, or to demonstrate many other competencies associated with leadership effectiveness.
Organisations that use personality assessment data to compare succession candidates against the role profile, and also against each other, can make the process genuinely equitable for everyone.
"Being able to compare candidates on the same dimensions is particularly useful," Ben Dattner explains.
By limiting the influence of bias, personality data gives a better sense of how far potential successors will be able to show integrity, accountability, initiative or any other competency essential to the role concerned.
Ben Dattner also points out that Hogan personality data can encourage diversity in leadership teams.
"Ideally, Hogan can help identify a diversity that does not rest on demographic criteria, differences in temperament, worldview, cognitive functioning or style, for example. These are dimensions organisations ought to take into account," he explains.
Leaders shape organisational performance at several levels: individually, by motivating and engaging people; at team level, by encouraging constructive collective dynamics; and at organisational level, by shaping culture and steering strategy.(3)
A diverse leadership team is very often a more effective and more inclusive one, whose influence spreads through every dimension of the organisation.
Hogan defines leadership as the ability to build and sustain a high-performing team.
A leader able to draw on diversity will be more likely to treat people fairly, to apply the organisation's policies consistently and to create an environment in which people can express their full potential.
"Leaders have to be able to win broad support. You cannot only manage people who resemble you. That, by definition, is a form of diversity," Rebecca Feder points out.
A high-performing succession strategy is not simply about identifying the next holder of a key role. It aims to build, over time, a talent pool diverse, prepared and agile enough to meet the organisation's future needs.
By combining transparency, objective criteria, skills development at every level and anticipation of the changes ahead, companies can make succession planning a genuine lever for HR strategy and sustainable management.
Personality assessment plays a decisive part here. Used alongside other relevant data, it makes better sense of leadership potential, compares candidates on shared criteria and informs assessment and development decisions with more objectivity.
For executives and talent management professionals, what is at stake therefore goes well beyond executive succession alone. It is about developing teams, strengthening organisational culture, supporting the company's transformation and building the conditions for lasting performance.
Ben Dattner founded and runs Dattner Consulting LLC. An executive coach and organisational effectiveness consultant, he works with companies, non-profit organisations and their leaders to strengthen their success through the development of leadership skills.
Rebecca Feder heads Princeton HR Insight LLC. A certified coach and HR professional, she has supported hundreds of leaders and teams across many sectors, helping them understand how motivation and differing management styles can have a positive impact on performance.
Nattavut Kulnides founded and leads ADGES as CEO. A seasoned consultant and coach who has sat in the C-suite himself, he works with leading international players in leadership assessment and development to help realise human potential.
James Sila founded Re-Imagination Coach. With more than 25 years of international experience in talent management, he supports leaders, teams and organisations so that they can move forward with confidence through solid, directly usable human capital planning.
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: Is Your Succession Planning Strategy Equitable?
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